Mindfulness: What’s on Your Mind??? (March 2016)

Have you ever been on vacation and continued to think about your responsibilities at home or work? Does the need for constant connectivity distract you from the task at hand? Does sleep evade you because you are thinking about everything but sleep? Living in a world full of distractions affords little time to practice stillness and calm. There seems to be little time to focus on just being. Mindfulness is considered a state of active, open attention, a state of being conscious or aware of something. Mindfulness is used as a therapeutic technique by mentally focusing one’s awareness on the present moment while acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts and bodily situations. Stress can accelerate biological aging, and studies have shown being mindful can reduce stress and prevent people from thinking about negative emotions.

Recent studies suggest mindfulness contributes to a more positive mind-set that could make us more resilient, improve cardiovascular health, have less body fat and slow the biological signs of aging. According to The Journal of Neuroscience, mindfulness meditation can reduce one’s emotional response to pain by 44%. If meditation is not something you would like to do, it may be more valuable to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life by doing your best to focus on the present moment. When you are mindful, you observe your thoughts and feeling from a distance without judging them as good or bad. You recover more quickly when stressful things happen. Instead of letting life pass you by, mindfulness lets you live in the moment. Learn more about mindfulness from a report by Anderson Cooper on a 60 Minutes TV program aired on December 14, 2014 at this website.